danlev

Copy and paste these 20 questions about being an artist... and answer them honestly! Title your journal "Honest Artist Challenge".

1. A genre or style I've tried and decided isn't for me: Digital painting. I dabbled with it in high school and college, but I just don't have the bandwidth to learn, and I don't want to be mediocre at it.

2. A common art advice I find hard to follow: Don't take criticism personally

3. My biggest art-related fear: Creating something that ends up being a huge waste of my time.

4. A project I've been putting off: I've always wanted to create a simple video game, but just don't have the time

5. A subject I feel like I'll never master: People & anatomy

6. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate my skills as an artist as a: 6

7. A subject or theme I avoid in my art: I've thought about this a lot, and I don't think there's any subjects or themes I actively avoid.

8. The most challenging project I've ever worked on and why: Dododex. It's consumed my life, and from a design perspective, it's challenging to design it well when I also have to be the one to code it. Especially when better design is often harder to code.

9. How I deal with creative blocks: Take a step back. Do something else. Come back to it later.

10. A skill I stopped learning... and have no regrets: 3D art. I got super into it in high school and planned on making it my career. As my interests evolved, I realize it wasn't really for me, but I'm still fascinated by it.

11. How I handle criticism and feedback: Not well.

12. My biggest motivater as an artist: Designing useful things that help people.

13. A skill I have that unfortunately won't pay the bills: It's a different type of creative skill, but I feel like I'm good at designing spreadsheets. Though I guess I make spreadsheets at work a lot, so I guess that's contributing towards paying bills?

14. A project I abandoned and why: About 10 years ago, I had an idea for designing a collaborative storytelling app/site and got pretty far into the planning stages of it. I put it on hold because of other projects and was worried about committing to it.

15. A color I rarely use and why: Brown? In interface design, I feel like it is just rarely ever used?

16. My hobby or interest that always competes with art: Gaming

17. A place I feel the most creative: In the shower

18. A place I feel the least creative: Around people

19. The most unexpected inspiration for my art: In terms of web/app design, I always find unexpected inspiration when I'm just going about my day. Just visiting random news or utility websites and then saying "wow, I love the way they designed this dropdown" and then saving it for future inspiration.

20. My main challenge as an artist this year: Being creative and doing creative things without it causing stress.

Take The Challenge

The cool thing about DeviantArt's new design is that it's super easy to make user style skins for. Our code uses CSS variables, so you can pretty much skin the entire site in just a few dozen lines of CSS. (If you're not familiar with CSS variables -- it's super simple.) It'll take some tweaking to make it look perfect on all pages, but it's super simple to make a skin that works across most of the site.

You can use a browser extension like Stylish.

For example, this code will replace the background color and top nav across the whole site on the DARK theme:

:root {

--D1:#202035;

}

Background color and top nav on the LIGHT theme:

:root {

--L1:#d0cde4;

}

The other cool thing is that there are variables for the light, dark, and green theme. So you could create a skin that has three variants, that will automatically switch when you use DeviantArt's theme toggle.

I just threw together a purple skin in <20 lines of CSS and 90% of the site is customized. It took less than half an hour. I admit it though -- my purple theme is ugly. 😂 But it's pretty cool how easy it was.

If anyone creates any skins, please share them!

In this week’s change log, we've implemented muted tags, saved folders from the old site, and a number of bug fixes and smaller improvements. Stay tuned for more, and keep the bug reports and feature requests coming!

Muted Tags

We’re excited to announce that the ability to mute tags is now live in Eclipse. Learn more about curating the content you want to see!

The Next Phase of DeviantArt Eclipse

In case you missed it, here’s a glimpse into what we’re working on next with DeviantArt Eclipse:

Change Log

• When on the old site, a new “Saved in Eclipse” notifications folder will appear. This folder lets you migrate any saved notifications to Eclipse.

• Adjusted contrast of the text on journals and Literature. This is the first of several theme-related color changes.

• When clicking the “X” on Feedback notifications, the notification is now removed immediately rather than lagging for a second.

• The Feedback message indicator on the top navigation now shows up to 999 notifications rather than 99.

• Updated sidebar with various design adjustments.

• Various design improvements to the new Watch Recommendations feature.

• Made loading much faster when clicking the next and previous buttons on a deviation page.

• Various design improvements to search and browse results for deviants and Groups.

• Video would not play in expanded mode.

• Fixed temporary issue where status update pages would not load.

• Cropping avatars in Firefox showed a rectangular crop rather than a square.

• Fixed issue where line breaks would not be displayed in Gallery folders and Collections.

Keep Sharing Your Feedback!

In addition to these updates and bug fixes are smaller improvements we’ve made as we continue to develop larger features in Eclipse.

Follow these steps to share your feedback:

1. Switch to DeviantArt Eclipse

2. Hover over your avatar

3. Select “Give Your Feedback” to access our official form

Haven’t received access to Eclipse yet? Join our waitlist today! Eclipse is steadily rolling out to deviants, so we’d love for you to start exploring the next phase of DeviantArt!

In this week’s change log, we've implemented a number of bug fixes and smaller improvements. Stay tuned for more, and keep the bug reports and feature requests coming!

Change Log

• Updated watch recommendations to exclude deviants who have not been active recently.

• Fixed various issues around the site related to longer usernames being cut off.

• Added the ability to manually flip through hot topic notifications in Feedback.

• Buy button is now disabled on closed commissions, rather than just giving an error when clicking it.

• Text on status update thumbnails were cut off.

• The back button would not work properly on collection pages unless it was clicked twice.

• While editing Collections, the 22nd Collection would appear as the "All" Collection.

• Added icon to drafts tab in Journals to indicate that they are only visible to you.

Keep Sharing Your Feedback!

In addition to these updates and bug fixes are smaller improvements we’ve made as we continue to develop larger features in Eclipse.

Follow these steps to share your feedback:

1. Switch to DeviantArt Eclipse

2. Hover over your avatar

3. Select “Give Your Feedback” to access our official form

Haven’t received access to Eclipse yet? Join our waitlist today! Eclipse is steadily rolling out to deviants, so we’d love for you to start exploring the next phase of DeviantArt!

In this week's change log, we've implemented a slideshow mode for your profile sections, the ability to select an image for the cover of your journal, a redesign of Feedback, and a new way to discover artists to watch! Plus, we've implemented a number of bug fixes and smaller improvements. Stay tuned for more, and keep the bug reports and feature requests coming!

Slideshow Mode for Gallery/Collection Section

Now you have the choice to display your favorite Gallery or Collection sections on your Profile in slideshow or grid mode! Play around with displaying multiple deviations, or showcasing one at a time.

Select A Custom Journal Cover Image

Choose an image from your Gallery or upload one to be the cover of your journal!

Feedback Redesign

We’ve updated the Feedback page to include two views: simple and advanced. We’ve also resized the page for a better viewing experience. Learn more about it here.

Watch Recommendations

Head over to your Watch page and select the "Discover" tab to find recommended deviants to watch!

Change Log

• Added a video tutorial to show how to edit and personalize your profile.

• When voting on a poll, clicking on a thumb now clicks through to the artwork rather than voting on the poll option.

• An empty dropdown would appear while editing profile sections if you had no Collections or Gallery folders.

• Text on the Commissions thumbnails would overlap the dropdown in Watch.

• Various design improvements to the comments modal that appears when you click “View more” on long comment threads.

Keep Sharing Your Feedback!

In addition to these updates and bug fixes are smaller improvements we’ve made as we continue to develop larger features in Eclipse.

Follow these steps to share your feedback:

1. Switch to DeviantArt Eclipse

2. Hover over your avatar

3. Select “Give Your Feedback” to access our official form

Haven’t received access to Eclipse yet? Join our waitlist today! Eclipse is steadily rolling out to deviants, so we’d love for you to start exploring the next phase of DeviantArt!